• The Challenge of Quantification: An Interdisciplinary Reading 

      Di Fiore, Monica; Kuc-Czarnecka, Marta; Lo Piano, Samuele; Maeso, Arnald Puy; Saltelli, Andrea (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2022)
      The present work looks at what we call “the multiverse of quantification”, where visible and invisible numbers permeate all aspects and venues of life. We review the contributions of different authors who focus on the roles ...
    • Current models underestimate future irrigated areas 

      Saltelli, Andrea; Puy, Arnald; Lo Piano, Samuele (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2020)
      Predictions of global irrigated areas are widely used to guide strategies that aim to secure environmental welfare and manage climate change. Here we show that these predictions, which range between 240 and 450 million ...
    • Ethics of quantification or quantification of ethics? 

      Saltelli, Andrea (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2020)
      Something can be gained by looking at common ethical features of different instances of quantification. While ethics of algorithms is perceived at present as an urgent issue, similar concerns can easily be associated to ...
    • Ethics of quantification: illumination, obfuscation and performative legitimation 

      Saltelli, Andrea; Rommetveit, Kjetil; Sareen, Siddharth (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2020)
      The increasing use of quantification in all spheres of society is paralleled by the rise of digitalisation. These intertwining developments not only revolutionise data treatment, but also its societal effects. On the one ...
    • The Future of Sensitivity Analysis: An essential discipline for systems modeling and policy support 

      Razavi, Saman; Jakeman, Anthony; Saltelli, Andrea; Prieur, Clémentine; Iooss, Bertrand; Borgonovo, Emanuele; Plischke, Elmar; Lo Piano, Samuele; Iwanaga, Takuya; Becker, William; Tarantola, Stefano; Guillaume, Joseph H.A.; Jakeman, John; Gupta, Hoshin; Melillo, Nicola; Rabitti, Giovanni; Chabridon, Vincent; Duan, Qingyun; Sun, Xifu; Smith, Stefán; Sheikholeslami, Razi; Hosseini, Nasim; Asadzadeh, Masoud; Puy, Arnald; Kucherenko, Sergei; Maier, Holger R. (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2021)
      Sensitivity analysis (SA) is en route to becoming an integral part of mathematical modeling. The tremendous potential benefits of SA are, however, yet to be fully realized, both for advancing mechanistic and data-driven ...
    • Impact assessment culture in the European Union. Time for something new? 

      Saltelli, Andrea; Kuc-Czarnecka, Marta; Piano, Samuele Lo; Lőrincz, Máté János; Olczyk, Magdalena; Puy, Arnald; Reinert, Erik S.; Smith, Stefán Thor; van der Sluijs, Jeroen P (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2023)
      Current approaches and cultures for the economic evaluations of environmental and health policies may suffer from excessive reliance on a standard neoclassic economic toolbox that neglects alternative perspectives. This ...
    • Improving the reliability of cohesion policy databases 

      Piano, Samuele Lo; Borgonovo, Emanuele; Maeso, Arnald Puy; Saltelli, Andrea; Walsh, John; Vidoni, Daniele (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2022)
      In this contribution, we present an innovative data-driven model to reconstruct a reliable temporal pattern for time-lagged statistical monetary figures. Our research cuts across several domains regarding the production ...
    • Irrigated areas drive irrigation water withdrawals 

      Maeso, Arnald Puy; Borgonovo, Emanuele; Lo Piano, Samuele; Levin, Simon A.; Saltelli, Andrea (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2021)
      A sustainable management of global freshwater resources requires reliable estimates of the water demanded by irrigated agriculture. This has been attempted by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) through country ...
    • Is VARS more intuitive and efficient than Sobol’ indices? 

      Maeso, Arnald Puy; Lo Piano, Samuele; Saltelli, Andrea (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2021)
      The Variogram Analysis of Response Surfaces (VARS) has been proposed by Razavi and Gupta as a new comprehensive framework in sensitivity analysis. According to these authors, VARS provides a more intuitive notion of ...
    • Large variations in global irrigation withdrawals caused by uncertain irrigation efficiencies 

      Maeso, Arnald Puy; Lankford, Bruce; Meier, Jonas; Van Der Kooij, Saskia; Saltelli, Andrea (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2022)
      An assessment of the human impact on the global water cycle requires estimating the volume of water withdrawn for irrigated agriculture. A key parameter in this calculation is the irrigation efficiency, which corrects for ...
    • Models with higher effective dimensions tend to produce more uncertain estimates 

      Maeso, Arnald Puy; Beneventano, Pierfrancesco; Levin, Simon A.; Lo Piano, Samuele; Portaluri, Tommaso; Saltelli, Andrea (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2022)
      Mathematical models are getting increasingly detailed to better predict phenomena or gain more accurate insights into the dynamics of a system of interest, even when there are no validation or training data available. Here, ...
    • Quantitative Storytelling in the Making of a Composite Indicator 

      Kuc‑Czarnecka, Marta; Lo Piano, Samuele; Saltelli, Andrea (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2020)
      The reasons for and against composite indicators are briefly reviewed, as well as the available theories for their construction. After noting the strong normative dimension of these measures—which ultimately aim to ‘tell ...
    • Science, the endless frontier of regulatory capture 

      Saltelli, Andrea; Dankel, Dorothy Jane; Di Fiore, Monica; Holland, Nina; Pigeon, Martin (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2022)
      In this paper we explore five recent cases of regulatory capture in Europe and zoom in on a form of corporate penetration which is based on a strategic use of the image and legitimacy of science. We examine cases in which ...
    • A sensitivity analysis of the PAWN sensitivity index 

      Puy, Arnald; Lo Piano, Samuele; Saltelli, Andrea (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2020)
      The PAWN index is gaining traction among the modelling community as a sensitivity measure. However, the robustness to its design parameters has not yet been scrutinized: the size (𝑁) and sampling (𝜀) of the model output, ...
    • Sensitivity analysis: A discipline coming of age 

      Saltelli, Andrea; Jakeman, Anthony; Razavi, Saman; Wu, Qiongli (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2021)
      Sensitivity analysis (SA) as a ‘formal’ and ‘standard’ component of scientific development and policy support is relatively young. Many researchers and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines have contributed to SA ...
    • A short comment on statistical versus mathematical modelling 

      Saltelli, Andrea (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2019-08-27)
    • Silver as a Constraint for a Large-Scale Development of Solar Photovoltaics? Scenario-Making to the Year 2050 Supported by Expert Engagement and Global Sensitivity Analysis 

      Lo Piano, Samuele; Saltelli, Andrea; van der Sluijs, Jeroen P (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2019-06-14)
      In this study we assess whether availability of silver could constrain a large-scale deployment of solar photovoltaics (PV). While silver-paste use in photovoltaics cell metallization is becoming more efficient, solar ...
    • Teaching scientific research integrity: A case study 

      Saltelli, Andrea (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2023)
      The focus of this case study is the question, ‘How can research integrity be taught in higher education?’ I will share my experience of teaching this topic over the past three years, organising the various dimensions of ...
    • The technique is never neutral. How methodological choices condition the generation of narratives for sustainability 

      Saltelli, Andrea; van der Sluijs, Jeroen P; Kaiser, Matthias; Reinert, Erik S.; Funtowicz, Silvio Oscar; Giampietro, Mario; Benini, Lorenzo (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2020-02-01)
      How to tackle uncertainties and ensure quality in integrated assessment for sustainability? To what extent does the choice of the methodology condition the narrative produced by the analysis? The present work argues that ...
    • Technoscience, policy and the new media. Nexus or vortex? 

      Saltelli, Andrea; Boulanger, Paul-Marie (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2020-01)
      Science, technology and policy are today entangled in concurrent crises, rapid transformations and conflicts, which are alimented by an ever-accelerating media system. Existing attempts to capture separate elements of ...